yahoo - 12/24/2025 6:32:20 PM - GMT (+2 )
Every year, we can quibble over whether the NBA’s schedule-makers aced the annual Christmas Day showcase — whether some fan base or another has cause to feel aggrieved over its squad not getting the brightest possible spotlight (we see you, Detroit!) or whether one participant or another has ridden too long on the struggle bus this season to make for a particularly compelling watch (hey there, Mavs-Warriors!). But while the powers that be are unlikely to ever fully nail all 10 teams and all five games, they have, inarguably, seeded the holiday slate with plenty of eye-catching talent.
The 2025 Christmas quintuple-header features the defending NBA champions, eight top-10 offenses and six top-10 defenses. We’ll (hopefully) see as many as five Most Valuable Player winners, including last year’s winner and runner-up, 10 of last season’s 15 All-NBA selections (though Evan Mobley’s likely to miss it with his calf strain) and more than 25 players who’ve earned an All-Star nod — plus a few more who might be on the verge of cracking that list themselves.
The NBA’s Christmas lineup should offer tons for fans to feast on: rivalries old and new, bona fide legends and new stars to get more familiar with … and, with any luck, a handful of games that stay tight late, treating those who’ve popped in between eggnog and dessert to a reminder of just how awesome highly competitive NBA basketball can be.
As we get set to tear open the presents and cut into the fruitcake, let’s take a look at the five most interesting players — to me! — on the NBA’s 2025 Christmas schedule, with one from each game. We begin with someone who’s having arguably the best all-around season of his career … 11 years, more than 700 games and nearly 24,000 minutes into it:
Glance at the box score, and it looks like KAT’s having a down year. He’s shooting a career-low 47.7% from the field. His 3-point percentage is lower than it’s been since his rookie season. His scoring — per game, per minute and per possession — are all down from last year. And nights like Sunday, when Towns scored just two points in 29 minutes against the Heat — his lowest-scoring game in more than eight years — don’t exactly help.
Look closer, though, and you’ll see that in the second half against Miami — when the Knicks seized control, built a double-digit lead and closed out their 20th win — New York outscored the Heat by seven points in Towns’ minutes, despite him making one measly basket.
Jalen Brunson going full-on Human Torch had plenty to do with that. But so did Towns finding a way to put his fingerprints on the game even when his shot wasn’t falling.
He leveraged his reputational gravity as a knockdown shooter to lift Miami’s bigs out of the paint, creating wider driving lanes. He tapped out offensive rebounds to extend possessions, made the extra pass, and set pin-in screens to give shooters an extra half-second to let it fly. And on the defensive end, he worked hard to box out and contest without fouling, delivered timely dig-downs on drivers, and dove on the floor to finish plays:
Trading for Towns was a bet that his suite of offensive skills would complement Brunson and New York’s wing corps well enough to generate a championship-caliber attack. So far, so good: Even amid Towns’ “down” season — one in which he’s one of just 17 players averaging 22 points per game on .600 true shooting, by the way, which is a hell of a definition of “down” — the Knicks rank No. 2 in the NBA in offensive efficiency, behind only the Nuggets.
The question, though, was whether New York could field a championship-caliber defense with Towns patrolling the back line. And while the jury’s still out there — the Knicks rank 13th in defensive efficiency thus far — it’s notable that they’ve allowed 112.9 points per 100 possessions in Towns’ minutes, equivalent to a top-six full-season mark.
KAT doesn’t record many blocks or steals, but he’s been making his presence felt when he contests a shot. Opponents are shooting 57.4% at the rim when he’s defending this season, according to Second Spectrum, his lowest percentage in six years. Being very big and in the right places can be very valuable, especially when you’re also elite at finishing possessions; Towns ranks fourth in the NBA in defensive rebounding rate. And while Towns often got roasted last season by pull-up shooters when playing drop coverage in the pick-and-roll, he’s proven to be much more effective when new head coach Mike Brown plays him higher on the floor — guarding mobile 4s and 5s in space, trapping and blitzing ball-handlers up top, and switching onto bigger wings on the perimeter.
It’s all added up to Towns — someone most fans have long since categorized as a bad defender — sitting tied for 23rd in the NBA in defensive estimated plus-minus, by far the best mark of his career, and placing him in the 94th percentile of NBA defenders this season. Whether he can keep that up as the Knicks move through the toughest stretches of their schedule and through what they expect to be a long postseason run remains to be seen. That he’s done it at all, though, has been a major development for a Knicks team trying to find the right two-way formula to advance to the NBA Finals — and a testament to the ability of even players we treat like known quantities to surprise us.
I know, I know: It feels almost sacrilegious to go with anyone but Victor Wembanyama here. Since I highlighted him last Christmas and have already written at length about him this season, though, I felt like I should probably look elsewhere. (That’s also why this section isn’t about Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, about whom I’ve already made my “this is a historically great season” pitch.)
When you watch San Antonio, and you look elsewhere, you know who tends to grab your eye? No. 5 — the dude sprinting past point-of-attack defenders, bodying up the league’s best scorers, finishing through contact on the interior, and looking like his whole skeleton is made of vibranium:
Castle is one of just 15 players averaging at least seven assists per game this season (and far away the youngest!) and ranks in the top 20 in both points created via assist and drives to the basket per game. He’s setting up nearly as many baskets at the rim per 100 possessions as Luka Dončić, and has very quickly developed into one hell of an alley-oop service provider for San Antonio’s above-the-rim finishers:
Only nine players have averaged 18 points and seven assists per game by their age-21 season: Dončić, Magic Johnson, Isiah Thomas, Allen Iverson, Stephon Marbury, LeBron James, Trae Young, Ja Morant and LaMelo Ball. Castle’s on pace to become the 10th. He’s also pulling in more than five rebounds per game. Add that filter and the peer group dwindles down to just Magic, LeBron, Luka and LaMelo.
So: You’ve got an electric athlete with great positional size, a relentless motor, a willingness to attack the glass, a penchant for spoon-feeding his teammates easy buckets, the ability to get downhill against damn near anybody, and a scoring profile that verges on top-flight efficiency — a .606 true shooting percentage, well above the league average of .582. That would be an awfully valuable player even if that guy wasn’t an excellent defender. Castle, however, grades out as a top-15 backcourt defender, according to EPM.
To put a finer point on it: According to The BBall Index’s tracking, Castle is one of just three players in the NBA to rank in the 95th percentile or better in average matchup difficulty, perimeter isolation defense and ball screen navigation. The list includes Dyson Daniels, who made the All-Defensive First Team last season, and Ausar Thompson, who very well could be on his way to making it this season. (It also includes Utah guard Svi Mykhailiuk, which makes me think I should watch the Jazz a little more closely?)
It would be inaccurate to say that a top-five pick that won Rookie of the Year is unsung or overlooked. It does feel fair to note, however, that it’s not exactly easy to find your own sliver of sunlight when you play in the context of the kind of outsized shadow cast by Wembanyama. But the recent NBA Cup knockout rounds helped illuminate just how exciting Castle is — a precocious sophomore with a veteran’s ability to play through physicality who seems to be getting better at everything, with the exception of 3-point shooting. (And even there, he’s made 40.6% of his triples since returning from a hip injury.) Coming off a pair of victories over the Thunder, another marquee matchup against SGA and the rest of OKC’s perimeter demons might help make it even clearer why the Spurs are reportedly unwilling to even consider including Castle (or ace rookie reserve Dylan Harper) in all those much-trade-machined proposals for the Greek fella up in Wisconsin, or any other superstar who might become available.
Until Castle can curb the turnovers and more consistently knock down his jumpers, he won’t reach the upper echelon of the NBA; he’s not a superstar in his own right just yet. Considering how fast he’s become this good, though — and how quickly the Spurs became a top-three team in the West — you can hardly blame San Antonio’s brass for preferring to sit tight and wait to see if he can’t just become one.
It became very clear very quickly that the Flagg-as-point-guard experiment was going to have diminishing returns for the Dallas offense. It also became very clear very quickly, though, that given how hard Flagg was trying to make it work, and how damn good he still looked while wearing a particularly ill-fitting suit, that he’d be a stunner just as soon as Jason Kidd found another — or, really, a — point guard to put next to him.
And for the last month and a half, the 18-year-old from Maine has looked like the very heights of fashion. Straight-off-the-runway, peak Russ tunnel fit stuff. The Blue Devil wears Prada; hold the Adrian Grenier.
You better work, Coop:
In the 23 games since the Mavs started putting a point guard in the starting lineup and sliding the galloping 6-foot-9 gazelle off the ball to more frequently serve as a finisher than an initiator, Flagg has averaged 20.9 points, 6.5 rebounds, 4.1 assists, 1.3 steals and 1.0 blocks per game on 51% shooting. Just for reference, 20-6-4-1-1 while making half your shots isn’t, like, “good for a rookie.” It’s a stat line that only 16 players have managed for a full season since the NBA started tracking blocks and steals in 1973. Twelve of them are Hall of Famers; the four that aren’t are LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Joel Embiid. So, y’know: Pretty decent company.
Granted, doing that for a quarter of the season isn’t the same as doing it for a full campaign. It’s worth noting, though, that the arrow just keeps pointing upward. Since Kidd decided that the point guard starting shouldn’t be D’Angelo Russell, Flagg’s up to 21.8 points per game on 52% shooting. And since Kidd tossed rookie Ryan Nembhard the keys (and Davis got healthy), Flagg’s up to 24.1 points and 4.8 assists per game on 53% shooting, including 58% on 2-pointers.
As Flagg’s workload increases, so does his production and efficiency. Over the last 12 games, he’s posting a .608 true shooting percentage while finishing nearly 26% of Dallas’ offensive possessions with a shot attempt, foul drawn or turnover. That’s star-caliber stuff from a kid who wasn’t even alive when the PlayStation 3 came out.
Flagg hasn’t looked much like a kid in close-and-late situations. In fact, he’s been Dallas’ go-to guy when crunch time rolls around.
Only three players in the NBA have scored more points in “clutch” scenarios — when the score is within five points in the final five minutes of the fourth quarter or overtime — than Flagg: SGA, Cade Cunningham and Tyrese Maxey. That’s due partially to the Mavs shopping wholesale when it comes to cardiac time: Dallas has played a league-leading 24 “clutch” games, and Flagg has played a league-leading 101 clutch minutes.
Still: 51% inside the arc in crunch time, primarily on self-created buckets where he’s putting his head down and bulldozing through tough defenders in isolation … 83% from the foul line on clutch free throws … with just three turnovers in 96 minutes while toting a 25.5% clutch usage rate? Not bad at all for a just-turned-19-year-old only beginning to learn the league in the midst of rampant organizational upheaval and a raft of injuries to the supposedly load-bearing core pieces around him.
There’s still plenty of work ahead: in developing a jumper threatening enough to dissuade defenders from going under on his ball screens and daring him to either shoot or beat them to the spot; in building the kind of functional strength that’ll keep burlier forwards from playing bully-ball against him on the block, like Saddiq Bey did in Dallas’ loss to the Pelicans on Monday; in braiding together the strands of two-way brilliance he’s shown into the consistency that makes an All-Star. As we look toward what Flagg will be, though, it’s worth appreciating what he is: a friggin’ monster who really has no business being this good this young, and who’s already an absolute joy to watch, night in and night out.
For years — decades, even — James has traveled in rarefied air, soaring through the record books and historical ranks in pursuit of what will be one of the most elevated and prominent spots in the NBA’s all-time constellation of superstars. Which is why it arched a few eyebrows when he spent part of his 23rd media day session talking about “moving into space.”
“I spent a lot of time [this offseason] on my catch-and-shoot 3-pointers […] understanding how I can make the most of when I don’t have the ball — you know, moving into space,” James told reporters back in September. “Obviously, Luka and [Austin Reaves are] gonna do a lot of time handling the ball. [...] So how can I still be effective on a team where I don’t have to handle the ball as much?”
What sounded at the time like it might’ve been just a savvy vet saying all the right things has actually borne out. Since returning from the sciatica injury that cost him the first 14 games of the season, a period during which a newly svelte Luka got off to an MVP-caliber start and Reaves put himself in the All-Star conversation, LeBron really has more determinedly gotten off the ball.
James is posting the lowest usage rate of his career and attempting fewer field goal attempts per 100 possessions than ever, with 52.2% of his buckets coming via an assist from a teammate — the first time the King has ever more than half of his makes fed to him rather than creating ’em himself. According to NBA RAPM, his on-ball percentage — literally the share of the game he’s got the ball in his hands, which had hovered between 30% and 40% for most of the last dozen years — is down to 18.4%, which slots the leading scorer in NBA history right in between Ayo Dosunmu and Drake Powell.
With Luka and Reaves shouldering the lion’s share of the ball-handling and playmaking responsibilities, LeBron has dramatically reoriented his offensive play style. As ESPN’s Zach Kram recently noted, James is driving, attacking in isolation and running pick-and-roll less frequently than ever. The bulk of the offensive possessions he’s finished have come in transition, where he’s still a freight train once he gets a head of steam, shooting 63.6% and averaging 1.27 points per possession, or as a spot-up threat, where he’s struggled a bit, shooting 8-for-25 from 3-point land off the catch, according to Synergy.
One area in which LeBron has still lorded over the proceedings? Operating from the post, where he can orchestrate a matchup he likes — maybe by setting a screen with a Laker guard to trigger a switch, maybe by having one of them set a pick for him with an empty corner to land him alone on the block against a smaller defender — and put to use all those lessons he learned from Hakeem Olajuwon way back in the day.
Whether it leads to James pressuring the rim himself or drawing help to sling passes to cutters or spot-up targets, the post-up remains an excellent vehicle for big men with great vision to create great looks. LeBron, even as he nears his 41st birthday, is still one of the best in the world at doing just that: Including plays where he passes to a Laker teammate who shoots, his post-ups are generating a sparkling 1.226 points per possession this season, according to Synergy — the 10th-highest rate among 64 players who’ve finished at least 30 such plays this season, and on pace for the highest mark of his career.
As neatly and productively as James has slotted into a tertiary role, though, the Lakers may well need more from him on Christmas Day, with Dončić and Reaves battling injuries. He’s still capable of cranking up his scoring when necessary, as he showed in averaging 30 across a three-game road trip last week. He also, however, hasn’t had to stay cranked up for long — at least, not alone: Just 62 of his 400 minutes this season have come without at least one of Dončić or Reaves on the floor, according to PBP Stats.
Leaning hard on LeBron to consistently create for lineups full of more complementary pieces clearly isn’t the way Lakers head coach JJ Redick would prefer to run things. If that’s what the game calls for, though, don’t be surprised if James presses pause on his stylistic change-up and shifts back to what he’s long done best.
“There’s not one team, not one club, in the world that I cannot fit in and play for,” James said last month. “I can do everything on the floor. So whatever this team needs me to do, I can do it when I’m back to myself.”
(One thing these Lakers could really use James doing? Finding a way to trigger an uptick on the defensive end. L.A. sits 25th in defensive efficiency this season, has defended at a bottom-two level in LeBron’s minutes, and has been outscored with James, Dončić and Reaves all on the court — a persistent problem dating back to last season, and one that has my podcast partner Tom Haberstroh arguing that the Lakers need to consider drastic measures in search of a resolution.)
I’ve written it anumberoftimesbefore: While Nikola Jokić can drag Denver to a top-five offense, a high-40s/low-50s win total and a puncher’s chance in the postseason, the Nuggets really only become the Nuggets when Murray is healthy, in shape, locked in and dealing. And man, has Murray been all four of those things this season.
Throughout his NBA career, the Canadian guard has developed a reputation as a slow starter — a player who needs some time in the late fall and early winter to find the rhythm on his jumper and get his game all the way thawed out before hitting his stride midway through the season. This helps explain why, despite being one of just six NBA players to average at least 20 points and six assists per game with an effective field goal percentage (which accounts for 3-pointers being worth more than 2-pointers) of .550 over the past six years — a list that includes four league MVPs and Luka — Murray has yet to earn a single All-Star selection.
Your mileage may vary as to whether the 28-year-old is the best active player not to make an All-Star team; CJ McCollum, Nicolas Batum, Derrick White and Murray’s teammates Aaron Gordon and Jonas Valančiūnas, among others, all have arguments in their favor. Considering he was the starting point guard on an NBA champion, though, he’s got a decent case.
Whatever you think of the merits of that case, it might soon become a moot point. Murray’s been playing at an All-Star level since the opening tip, dispensing with the thawing-out period and just getting off to the best start of his career, averaging 25.1 points, 4.4 rebounds and 6.9 assists per game — all career highs — while knocking on the door of the 50/40/90 club. (And, in fact, flirting with joining Stephen Curry, Steve Nash and Steve Kerr in the 50/45/90 club. Three Steves and a Jamal. Pretty good gang.)
Ratcheting up his 3-point volume and accuracy, while also drilling a scorching 48% of his long midrange Js, has resulted in the most efficient shooting of Murray’s career: 1.29 points per shot attempt, the 12th-best mark of any player using at least 20% of his team’s offensive possessions, according to Cleaning the Glass, just behind Curry and Kevin Durant. He’s been lethal firing out of the pick-and-roll: Among players finishing at least five plays per game as a ball-handler in the two-man game, only SGA’s averaging more points per possession on those actions than Murray, according to Synergy’s tracking.
When Murray’s at his best, though, he’s pairing the threat of his three-level scoring — the ability to touch the paint, finish in traffic and get to the free-throw line; to weave his way into pockets of space in the midrange; and to pull up from well beyond the 3-point arc — with great court vision and steady playmaking. He’ll never be the primary facilitator in Denver with Jokić at the controls, but he’s notched the assist on 28.8% of his teammates’ baskets during his time on the floor while turning it over on just 10.2% of the Nuggets’ offensive possessions. That’s an elite combination of table-setting and temperance, matched this season only by Gilgeous-Alexander, Brunson and Maxey — All-Star, All-NBA-caliber company on the ball.
Jokić, as ever, is the driver of that historic output. Without Murray to serve as his counterpoint, though — his inverted screen-setter, his eternal dance partner, forever a threat to drop a nuke on a defense that tilts too heavily toward the big fella — the Nuggets wouldn’t have nearly as much fire as they put opponents on ice.
“The way he’s playing, he [scores] 52 and you think you’re gonna come out and shoot 25 times — why not?” Nuggets head coach David Adelman told reporters earlier this month. “He goes 8-for-16 instead and gets 23 [points] and 12 [assists] and just kind of takes whatever the game is giving him. … He’s playing as good as anybody right now.”
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